Conventional websites, such as Authorize.net™, provide services to small merchants (e.g., a restaurant) that do not have full service websites that would allow customers to add items to a shopping cart and provide payment information on a checkout page. These conventional websites allow merchants to create a checkout button as an HTML element that includes product information. The checkout button is linked to a single checkout page (i.e., single URL for all products), and the product information is used to populate fields of the checkout page. In this manner, the merchant does not need to display product information for the user to add to a checkout page, but simply adds specific product information to the checkout button.
However, there is no direct, easy way for merchants to sell individual products on social media platforms (e.g., blogs, Facebook™, Twitter™, etc.) or other websites that have software controls that preclude adding product information to a button. Although conventional websites allow users to create checkout buttons, both the creation and publication of the buttons is complicated in that the merchant must log on to a dedicated website and create an HTML form element. The button can then only be published on websites that allow the merchant to post HTML form elements that send information (e.g., product information) to a host server.
Most social media platforms do not allow merchants to post such HTML form elements, primarily because they can send additional information that is invisible to the user to an external server when a link is clicked. Thus, a merchant cannot add the same checkout button used for their own website to a comment or post on a social media website. A merchant may want to do so when a comment or post refers to a product sold by the merchant. In this manner, the merchant would be able to allow a customer to easily purchase the item using a link in a comment or post.
In addition, integrating a checkout button into social media platforms presents a number of technical difficulties. For example, many social media platforms validate the authenticity of any links before allowing them to be posted. Further, many social media platforms need to generate and post accurate summaries of posted links from information provided on the linked website.